V. I. Lenin

Draft Decision of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on the

Report of the Delegation to the Genoa Conference

Written: 15 or 16 May, 1922 First Published: Published for the first time; Published according to the manuscriptSource: Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 356-357Translated: David Skvirsky and George HannaTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters &
R. CymbalaCopyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

The All-Russia Central Executive Committee’s draft
resolution on bile’s report should be drawn up approximately as
follows:

1. The delegation of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee has
carried out its task correctly in upholding the full sovereignty of the
R.S.F.S.R., opposing attempts to force the country into bondage and restore
private property, and in concluding a treaty with Germany.

2. The international political and economic situation is characterised by
the following features.

Political: the absence of peace and the danger of fresh imperialist wars
Ireland, India, China and others; worsening of relations between Britain and
France, between Japan and the United States, etc., etc. ((in greater
detail)).

3. Economic: the “victor” countries, exceedingly powerful and
enriched by the war (=by plunder), have not been able to re-establish even
the former capitalist relations three and a half years after the war
currency chaos; non-fulfilment of the Treaty of Versailles and the
impossibility of its fulfilment; non-payment of debts to the United States,
etc., etc. (in greater detail).

4. Therefore, Article One of the Cannes resolutions, by recognising the
equality of the two property systems (capitalist or private property, and
communist property, so far accepted only in the R.S.F.S.R.), is thus
compelled to recognise, even if only indirectly, the collapse, the
bankruptcy of the first property system and the inevitability of its coming
to an agreement with the second, on terms of equality.

5. The other articles of the Cannes terms, as well as the memoranda,
etc., of the powers at Genoa, are in contradiction to this and are,
therefore, still-born.

6. True equality of the two property systems—if only as a temporary
state, until such time as the entire world abandons private property and the
economic chaos and wars engendered by it for the higher property
system—is found only in the Treaty of RapaIlo.[1]

The All-Russia Central Executive Committee, therefore:

welcomes the Treaty of Rapailo as the only correct -way out of the
difficulties, chaos and danger of wars (as long as there remain two property
systems, one of them as obsolete as capitalist property);

recognises only this type of treaty as normal for relations between the
R.S.F.S.R. and capitalist countries;

instructs the Council of People’s Commissars and the People’s
Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to pursue a policy along these lines;

instructs the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee to
confirm it by agreement with all republics that are in federal relations
with the R.S.F.S.R.;

instructs the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and the
Council of People’s Commissars to permit deviations from the
Rapallo-type treaty only in exceptional circumstances that gain very special
advantages for the working people of the R.S.F.S.R., etc.

Endnotes

[1] The treaty
signed by Soviet Russia and Germany on April 16, 1922 at Rapailo (near
Genoa) at the time of the Genoa Conference.

Under this treaty the signatories renounced all claims
arising from the First World War. On the condition that the Soviet
Government would not meet similar claims of other states, the German
Government renounced its demand for the return to former German owners of
enterprises nationalised by the Soviet Government. At the same time the two
countries established diplomatic relations and most favoured nation
treatment in economic questions, The signing of the Rapallo Treaty was a
major achievement of Soviet diplomacy. It strengthened the Soviet
state’s international position and wrecked the attempts to form a
united anti-Soviet front. This treaty showed the Soviet Government’s
desire to normalise relations with bourgeois states solely on the
basis of recognition of the equality of the two systems of ownership.